I see it reference frequently and don't know what it is. Maybe I should, but I don't.
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I was involved in various aspects of CDE during the almost 4 years that this Titanic-like debacle was under way. During that time, I saw millions upon millions of dollars being thrown at work efforts that should have cost a small fraction of what was being spent. Prior to being at State Farm, I came from companies who's leadership would make you justify $100,000.00 and hold you accountable for the results of that work effort. However, at State Farm, a team could ask for millions of dollars just to develop an idea that was referred to as a Business Case Development (BCD) project. Millions of dollars to develop an idea... not a product... an idea. When these Millions of dollars ran out, the team would come back and ask for more money, and they got it! With no sense of accountability to explain why they blew through the previous pile of money they were given. Nobody even asked what was accomplished with the first pile of money. Leadership just kept passing out more funding like it was candy on Halloween.
This lack of leadership and accountability made me nauseous every day, mainly because I observed this buffoonery happening every day. It was so sad to see such a great company unnecessarily deteriorating before my very eyes.
perfect description @qlq
One of the 12 asked me if I had any meetings on Thursdays because that was his golf day so he couldn't do Thursday afternoons.
Well, the truth is that CDE lowered morale so much that many people simply stopped trying. Every project was a fruitless death march. And the leaders either didn't know or didn't care. So yeah, I get it that some people were just playing golf.
Remember, attitude reflects leadership.
I busted my a-- for this company until the day I started getting in trouble for doing my best work. When it became clear that my managers wanted a "friendlier" approach that accomplished far less, that's exactly what I gave them.
For my next job, I won't settle for a company where "mailing it in" is the expectation.
CDE was a Maoist style 'great leap forward' that was supposed to sweep aside all the technical baggage and silos built over the years and leapfrog us ahead of the competition. It failed as badly as Mao's did. Two billion down the drain and still way behind, even worse than before since what is left of CDE is just another crappy platform.
Best. Analogy. Ever. And spot on qlq. I am laughing because if you don't laugh you'll cry at how insane it truly is :D It's like the employees are getting fired for ordering said explosives by the dunderheads who told them to, sorry not sorry. But what do I know, I was just a low-totem external who did everyone's work. Literally took 12 internals to split up my systems work :D That was a year ago, and I knew then there were waaaay too many people not working efficiently or effectively for that many people to be available and needing work. One of the 12 asked me if I had any meetings on Thursdays because that was his golf day so he couldn't do Thursday afternoons. :D Can't make this up! I'm sure some Bloomington Systems internals are very hard working and understand their jobs well and didn't need me to explain it to them, but I just didn't work with those kind very much... My only hope for the hard working internals is that those who shirk responsibility for ANY reason are called out. Won't get better unless the good ones get to do good work.
Too bad you missed the all hands meetings which featured cake and water.
No sh--!
It started in spring 2012 and was widely recognized as a total failure by 2014. I was involved from the beginning and saw what kind of half baked mess it was from day one.
Customer Driven Evolution. It was a multi-billion dollar waste of money, wherein our fearless leaders managed to take everything that worked in Systems and render it totally ineffective.
Imagine if you were trying to build a custom house. To do this, you decided to spend billions of dollars on nuclear warheads and then proceeded to obliterate the construction site. Yeah, that's sort of like CDE.